


The Things You Bring With You

by phinnia



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 12:52:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16367999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phinnia/pseuds/phinnia
Summary: You bring a lot of stuff with you, starting a relationship.





	The Things You Bring With You

It started with a toothbrush. A red one, to be specific.

Harry had slept on Tom’s sofa a few times before when they’d both been too drunk or too tired to bother going home, but he really hated not brushing his teeth before he went to sleep. So he replicated himself a toothbrush and left it in the cup beside Tom’s. Tom’s was blue, so he replicated a red one. He figured it was fine.

Tom had a habit of noticing every tiny thing, so of course he noticed the toothbrush. “Why is there another toothbrush in here?” he asked.

“That’s mine.” Harry said around his mouthful of popcorn.

Tom stuck his head out of the bathroom, toothbrush stuck in his own mouth. He says something that Harry can’t make out, spitting tooth cleaner all over the place.

“Uh, what was that?”

Tom puts his head back in the bathroom, spits out the tooth cleaner, and tries again. “I didn’t know you were moving in.”

“I’m not moving in.” Harry says. “It’s a toothbrush. I like having clean teeth.”

“Oh. Is that all?”

“Yes, Tom.” Harry sighs deeply. “That’s it.”

Tom shrugs.

 

Then it was hair gel. Harry liked having neat hair, too.

“Why do you have to put this … stuff in your hair?” Tom asks.

“You don’t like it?”

“I like it natural.”

“But it’s all floppy like that and I look about five years old.”

“So? I still like it that way.”

Harry rucks up Tom’s hair, feeling the curls flatten and twist under his fingers.

“Hey!”

“I like your hair like this.” Harry laughs.

 

The next thing was a spare uniform. Harry was completely sick of having to go back to his quarters to change before they went to the mess hall.

“That looks really disorienting, hanging next to my uniforms. It’s the wrong color and everything.” Tom says.

“Why is Harry’s uniform hanging in your closet?” B’Elanna asked him.

“It’s just the one uniform.” Harry says, his ears already turning pink.

“Oh, sure.” she says. “Of course it is. That doesn’t answer the question of why it’s there.”

“I hate going to my quarters to get changed before we go to the mess hall.” Harry is now blushing.

“Oh? And why do you have to go to your quarters to get changed?” she elbows Harry in the ribs. “What have you guys been doing after hours? And why don’t I get to watch?”

“We drink! We get drunk! That’s all!” Tom says.

“Oh, come on. No drunken fumbling? Really, Paris?”

“No.” Now Tom is the one blushing. “Okay … once.”

“No, twice." Harry mutters. "That time after Pallas Six."

“Oh. Right.” Tom is getting even redder. “That time. Right.”

“Oh? What happened that time?” B’Elanna tries to look Tom or Harry in the eye, but both of them avoid looking at her. Then she gets called down to Engineering by Carey and gets sidetracked.

There was a long pause.

“Harry - “

“Tom -“

“You first.” Tom says, staring at the bluish-green stuff on his plate.

“No, you.” Harry stares at the pink stuff on his own plate.

“Okay.” Tom is still staring at the blue-green stuff, playing with it with his fork. “Um. We should maybe …”

“Talk about this stuff.”

“I was going to say ‘make out we’re not falling-down drunk’.”

“Well, that too.” Harry laughs. 

“I can’t eat this.” Tom says. “Food’s not supposed to be that color. It’s just wrong.”

“Here.” Harry hands him his fork. “Have some of this.”

Tom has some of the pinkish-red stuff on Harry’s plate. “This is actually not bad. A little bland, though, which is surprising from Neelix.”

Harry mixes the two dishes together. “Here. Try this. Don’t look at it, just try it.”

Tom looked at Harry and scooped some of the … stuff, which was now a really unappetizing brown color, in his mouth. “Hey! This is … actually really good.”

“It is.” Harry scrapes half of the stuff off his plate onto Tom’s, and half of the stuff off of Tom’s plate onto his own. “There. If you mix it together, it’s great.”

“Gentlemen.” The captain walks past. “What is that?"

“Oh, it’s the blue-green stuff mixed with the pinkish-red stuff.” Harry says. “They’re pretty good if you mix them both together.”

“It looks like … wet dog food.” 

“Well, yeah.” Tom looks at it. “It does. But it’s better than wet dog food, I swear.”

 

The next thing was a pillow. Because it was really difficult for two people to sleep on just one pillow, and Tom kept waking up sleeping on the mattress, so he got out of bed, wobbled over to the replicator, and replicated himself another pillow.

“Tom?” Harry looked up sleepily.

“Yeah?” Tom licked his lips. “What?”

“Just wondered where you went.”

“You’re a pillow hog. I’m getting another one.” He falls back into bed, on top of Harry.

Harry says something from underneath him.

“What?”

“I said that makes four times drunken fumbling now.” Harry says again, more clearly. “You’re heavy.”

“You didn’t think so three hours ago.”

“You didn’t fall on me three hours ago.”

“Fair point.” Tom concedes. “We should really make out sober sometime.”

"Are you drunk now?"

“Not as drunk as I was three hours ago.” Tom thinks about this. “I’d say about five percent drunk. So drunk-ish. Definitely more sober than drunk.”

“Okay.” Harry leans up on his elbow and leans forward, and Tom leans forward, too. They smash their lips together. It’s a messy kiss, but Harry adjusts and it gets better. Tom slips his tongue in Harry’s mouth after a minute or so and it gets even better. 

“Hey.” Harry murmurs after after a few minutes. “You’re not a bad kisser, sober or drunk.”

“Neither are you.” Tom breathes back.

They keep kissing, and Tom starts grinding his hips against Harry’s hips, and that feels fantastic. Harry starts grinding back against him with equal fervor.

“Damn, you are good at this.” Harry murmurs.

“Got a lot of practice in Marseillies.” Tom grins. “And in Auckland. And a few other places, too, come to think of it. Bondi Beach, San Francisco.”

“So you weren’t just drinking and playing pool in France.”

“Oh no.” Tom nipped Harry’s neck. “I should show you the real version of Rickie sometime.”

“The one in the holodeck isn’t the real version?” Harry murmured.

“Harry, Harry, Harry.” Tom laughs. “Think about it for a few minutes.”

He did think about it, and then it occurred to him. “Oh.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“You made Ricky into Rickie?”

“Yup. That was the best part.” He snickers. “Well, the best part was fooling my father with the new version. I told him she was in transit to her next posting, and he believed me.”

Harry sucks on Tom’s earlobe, and Tom moans, and they continue making out.

 

The next thing was pictures, which Harry found when he was cleaning (something which Tom was clearly unfamiliar with) the closet.

“What in the name of God is in here?” Harry said. “You have enough dust bunnies to build a dust bunny version of Voyager, completely crewed with dust bunnies, and some ships to attack it.”

“Kazon ships?” Tom says with his mouth full of pizza.

“Kazon ships, Hirogen hunting parties. All made of dust bunnies.” Harry spots something on the floor - a holographic cube on the closet floor. “What’s this?” He picks it up and waves it at Tom.

“Oh, no. Give me that.” Tom reaches over and tries to grab it, but Harry snatches it back.

“What is it?”

“Something I don’t want to talk about.”

Harry thumbs the cube. “Oh, it has … images in it. Three images.”

“I know.” Tom sighs. “I know it does.”

Harry looks through them, coming out of the closet. Tom and an older blonde girl, laughing. The older blonde girl was dressed in a blue, close-fitting dress. Tom was wearing a fancy suit.

“My sister Kathleen.” Tom sighs.

“Older than you?”

“Yeah. Ten years older. If I remember, Kath was making a joke about something. Kathleen’s got a great sense of humor.”

“Like you.” Harry sits down beside him.

“Yeah.” Tom grins. “Probably endemic.”

Harry thumbs to the next image. A younger Kathleen is sitting on a hill, She’s trying to keep a much younger Tom from running off, and a girl that seems to be between their two ages is dressed in a green coverall. She’s sitting on the hillside higher up, and she seems a little more … prim and proper.

“That’s Moira.” Tom mutters. “She’s the one between Kathleen and me. Exactly between. Five years older than me.”

“How old were you in this?”

“Um … three, I think.”

Harry looks at the picture more closely. “Yeah. You look about three. I can imagine you, tearing around, getting into everything. Climbing onto stuff.”

“Swimming.” The ghost of a smile was on Tom’s face. “I was in and out of the water. Constantly in over my head, not that I ever let that stop me.”

“Well, you wouldn’t.” Harry says, laughing, and thumbs the next photo on the cube. 

This one is Tom with a couple of adults. Tom is dressed in cadet uniform, and the man behind him is also in Starfleet uniform - command red, wearing admiral’s bars. He’s got grey hair and dark eyes, and he looks very serious. The woman standing directly behind Tom looks more like him - the same blonde hair and blue eyes. She’s trying to hide a smile, and wearing a dark navy dress.

“My parents.” Tom sighs.

“You get your sense of humor from your mother.” Harry says. “And your looks.”

“Yeah.” Tom says. “Not much from my father. Stubbornness.”

“Well, you can thank him for stubbornness.” Harry laughs. “Stubbornness is good. Why did you keep this in the closet?”

“I don’t know.” Tom says. “I don’t really like thinking about my parents.” 

“What about your sisters?”

“I like both of them. Moira’s a bit more …like my dad. Sober, subdued. But she’s artistic as hell. She plays the piano. I probably have a recording of her around here somewhere.”

Harry turns the cube so it’s displaying the three children on the hill, and puts that image on the desk.

Tom looks at it. “That’s okay, though.”

“Yeah.” Harry smiles. “It’s fine.”

Three days later, Harry came by and dropped a data chip in Tom’s lap.

“Harry! Is this some kinky holoprogram?”

“Nope. You can play it right now, if you want.”

Seemed to be a slow day.

“Go ahead, Tom, let’s see what it is.” The captain said.

Harry comes across the bridge, takes it back, slots it in at the ops console, and its on the main viewer. 

Tom blinks.

There’s a stage in front of them, a large stage. Moira is sitting on the stage, on a piano bench. She’s older now, wearing dark pants and a white shirt. “I just heard that my brother Tom is alive.” she says to an assembled audience. “I can’t tell you how amazed I was to find that out! Everybody thought he was dead! You’ll never guess where he is, either - the delta quadrant.” She starts laughing, and her laugh sounds a lot like Tom’s laugh. “Tommy the explorer now exploring the outer limits. So Tom, if you’re hearing this, here’s a song for you. I call it ‘the outer limits’.”

It’s a classical piece, Baroque sounding, but it has a lightness to it that baroque pieces usually don’t have. Harry likes it - she’s light on the pedals, most of his friends who played were heavier on the pedals - and it ended with a bright ending, not the darkness he was expecting, but still … almost haunting.

“That’s his sister Moira.” Harry says. “My parents went to a concert and they saw her playing. They sent me this recording in their last letter. Isn’t she great?”

“She’s fantastic.” Janeway says. “That is lovely piano playing.”

Tom smiles back at Harry. “Thanks for this.”

“Thank my parents. You should probably meet them next time I call them.”

Tom swallows. Uh. Yeah. Maybe he should.

The next thing is a sliver of Tom’s self-confidence, which he finds somewhere in the closet.

“Do I have to wear anything fancy for this?” Tom is fiddling with his closet. 

“No! Just anything you want.” Harry’s smiling. “That blue shirt makes you look nice.”

“Fine. I’ll wear that.”

They walk to the Astrometrics lab. Harry hands his chip to Seven, and tells him he wants to call his parents. 

Harry smiles. “Mom! Dad! I want you to meet someone. This is my boyfriend. Tom.”

Tom smiles and coughs a little bit. “Tom Paris. I want to thank you for that concert footage … of my sister, Moira? It was great to hear her play again.”

“That was your sister?” Harry’s father says.

“Of course it was! She looks just like him.” Harry’s mother replies. “The same eyes and face. Do you play an instrument, Tom?”

“I dabble a little on the piano. I’m not nearly as good as my sister, though.”

“You never said you played the piano.” Harry says with a laugh. 

“I don’t play. I dabble. A little.” 

“We’ll have to hear you play.” Harry’s mother.says. “You and Harry can play something when you come home.”

Harry talks about cousins and other relatives, and then the call is ended.

“Do you think they liked me?”

“They did.” Harry says. “Now, show me how you dabble at the piano.”

So they went to the holodeck.

“Okay, don’t mock me, I can only play this thing by ear.” Tom says.

“Yes, but you have an ear. I had an Academy roommate who couldn’t carry a tune in a bag, Tom. For two years running. He thought Julliard was a holo-magazine.”

Tom laughed. “Okay, okay.”

Tom played a few French songs Harry had heard around Sandrine’s.

“You know, you’re a remarkably good dabbler.” Harry sat down beside him on the piano bench. “Now. When do I get to meet your parents?”

“My parents? Oh, God. Probably never, which is about when I want to see them myself. At least my father."

“What about your sisters?”

Tom sighs. “Were you really serious about that boyfriend thing?”

“Well, I think we’ve made out enough, we basically live together, I’d call us boyfriends at this point.”

Tom fidgets on the piano bench, his hands moving over the piano keyboard and not making any sounds. “Well, if you can wait a couple days, I can call Kath and Moira. I mean, if you really want to meet them."

Harry punches him in the arm. “Of course I do.”

The last thing was the call chip that Tom had mysteriously ‘lost’, which Harry found under the mattress.

“I didn’t think you’d actually look there.” Tom mumbles.

“Why did you hide it under the mattress?” Harry nudges him. “Are you nervous? Ashamed?”

“Worried my parents are going to be around more than anything.” Tom sighs. “My father has a tendency to drop in. We didn’t really part on good terms.”

“Right, but he said he misses you. And that he was proud of you.”

“Yeah, but that was meant for Janeway to hear. He likes Janeway. He doesn’t like me.”

“Well, come on. Before you get any more nervous, you might as well get it over with.” Harry drags Tom through the halls to Astrometrics.

Tom gives Seven the chip, and he gives her Kathleen’s information.

Kathleen answers. Her smile is broad, like Tom’s, but more feminine. “Tom! Hey, it’s Tom!”

“Kath.” Tom grins back at her. “Who’s around?”

“Just us girls. How long do you have?”

“Three minutes, actually, not too long.”

Harry sees Moira’s head poking in on the other side, waving, and Tom’s mother.

“Uh, Moira? I heard that song you wrote, ‘the outer limits’? That was great.”

“Really?” Moira squeals. “Oh, wow. You liked it?”

“Yeah, I loved it.” Tom coughs. “Um. I want you to meet somebody. This … this is Harry. Harry’s my … my boyfriend.”

“Oh, hi!” Kathleen waved. “That’s great! He’s adorable, Tom, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”

“He gave me the footage of Moira’s concert.” Tom says. “Well, his parents did.”

“They went to a concert and saw you there.” Harry replied.

“Oh! That must have been the concert I debuted it at. Did you get the speech, too?”

“Yeah, I did.” Tom said. “That was the best part. You got dad’s public speaking genes.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, kid.” Kathleen said. “He’s great at talking.”

“Good at talking himself out of a tight spot, anyway.” Harry laughs. “Or into one.”

“Oh, you’ve noticed that.” Tom’s mother says with a laugh.

They keep talking for the rest of the three-minute call.


End file.
